


Norway

by Sholio



Category: Alliance-Union - C. J. Cherryh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-22
Updated: 2007-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-25 07:26:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1638827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He didn't even like these people. Except when he did. And THAT was a gravity well that turned Ben Pollard's bones to water, his stomach to ice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Norway

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Serenade

 

 

The ocean was a ruffled sheet of gray plastic, like the kind you might find in any space station, stretching to a horizon much too far away and not nearly curved enough. And that water was fuckin' _cold_. At least, Dekker said so; Ben took his word for it, because open water, planetside, was bound to have some kind of nasty pathogen in it, and while Dek-boy might be enough of an idiot to stick his hand in it, Benjamin K. Pollard certainly wasn't.

So far, Earth had turned out to be a bit of a disappointment considering all the stories he'd heard. As far as Ben could see, Earth was gray and Earth was cold, and right now Earth had decided to drip water inconsiderately on his head. A sharp wet wind off the ocean cut straight through his blue windbreaker, which made him wonder what the hell the name _windbreaker_ was supposed to refer to. He'd never known things could be cold _and_ wet at the same time. Onstation, the problem was usually too little humidity, not too much.

How the hell was he supposed to know that the weather on Earth would be different in October than in June? Who thought about stuff like that? Well, Earthers, obviously, he supposed. But it hadn't even occurred to him to check ... any more than it had occurred to him that he might be traveling back to Earth with the Idiot Brigade in tow.

Dek straightened up from the ocean's edge, shaking a fine spray of water off his hand. "God, cold, _ow,"_ he said, and then shot Ben a weird little-kid grin that lightened up his face; it almost succeeded in chasing away the perpetually haunted look he wore. For a fleeting instant, Ben thought that dragging them all Earthside might actually have been worthwhile, as opposed to the giant pain in the ass that he _knew_ it was.

He dug his hands deep in the pockets of his windbreaker, searching for lingering vestiges of warmth. "You catch something from that, you're taking your _own_ effing shuttle back."

Dekker just snorted, and picked up a rock, hefting its weight in his hand before flinging it out, far out among the crawling waves.

Meg was crouched at the water's edge, a little way down the beach, gathering shells. Ben didn't feel like telling her that the weight probably wouldn't pass inspections, going back on the shuttle where you paid by the ounce. Instead he watched her hold them up to the flat gray light, testing edges with her nimble fingers and tossing the imperfect ones back to sea. 

Shouldn't have said a thing, Ben thought gloomily as he drifted in Meg's direction, staying well back from the waves as they leapt and died on the rocks. Should have woke up one morning, said, "See you guys, back in a month, try not to die while I'm gone" and hauled his duffle off to the nearest transport. But, no. He had to open his mouth one morning in the mess. The girls had been deep in a discussion of their own upcoming leave time; near as he could figure, they were planning on spending it drinking and gambling, mostly. Sal had jabbed an elbow into his ribs and asked, "What are _you_ doing, cher?" And like a whipped fool, he told her the truth, and the next thing he knew, the only three people he bothered to give the time of day had invited themselves along on _his_ vacation. Frankly, he thought it was presuming a bit much.

Sal might've been halfway decent company. Sal, however, after taking one look at that infinite horizon, had vanished into their rental cabin, shut all the blinds and barricaded herself with a stack of porn vids. Ben would have loved to do likewise, because staring at the too-high sky gave him the same feeling he got when he stared too long into a planetside gravity well from space -- a deep, stomach-clenching, upside-down feeling, somewhere between awe and terror. However, he sure as _hell_ didn't plan on spending his one and only vacation on Earth hiding inside four walls. May as well stay back in space. And he doubly wasn't going to let Paul Dekker show him up as a coward.

So here he stood like the system's biggest sucker on a lonely gray strand of beach with Dek and Meg, freezing hands jammed in his pockets, watching both of them play "more Earther than you are" even though -- as far as he knew -- neither of those two morons had any more experience with Earth than he did. Sure, Dek could probably see Earth from his bedroom window, growing up; but that had fuck-all to do with standing on it.

"Too bad Sal's not out here," Meg commented, her fists covered with sand and full of the cast-off skins of shellfish. Animal parts. It made Ben shudder to look.

"Yeah. Too bad. Figure she's the only one of us with any sense, the only one won't go home with pneumonia."

Meg made a rude noise and fished a curly bit of wood or plastic or something out of the sand. Ben poked at the beach with his toe. At first glance, it just looked like a bunch of rocks, but whenever he let his eyes linger on a place, it resolved itself into a variety of different things that both interested and repelled him. Little rocks and big ones, in all kinds of shapes; shells, and snails, and trash, and things that he thought might be different kinds of animals or maybe just rocks. 

Looking at the beach should have been better than staring out at the horizon, but instead, the more he looked, the more he got that gravity-well feeling at the pit of his stomach. All the different things to see just on this gray stretch of beach, and then the thought that there was a whole world out there, made up of this much variety ... he'd always felt a little bit sorry for Earthers, stuck on their tiny little planet with a whole universe out there, but at the moment he felt small in the same way he sometimes did when he looked at the stars.

"Where's Dekker?" Meg asked suddenly, shading her eyes from the stinging rain with a shelf of sandy fingers.

Crazy effing pilot. It was like trying to keep track of the wind, and about as much fun. They finally located him a lot farther down the beach than Ben would have expected, standing too close to the ocean with white-topped waves curling around his shoes.

Dek was so lost in the distant horizon that he didn't even notice Ben and Meg closing ranks around him, until he looked up suddenly with the wet gray sky in his eyes. And Ben thought that he himself might not be the only one who saw a deadly and seductive gravity well where Earthers saw horizons and sunsets and other poetic, damnfool things.

"Okay, that is effing _enough_. Sal's the only one with sense, and we're going and joining her right now." He and Meg didn't give Dek a choice, just gathered him up by the elbows and half-dragged him to what passed for home down here at the bottom of the Motherwell.

* * *

Sal looked up when they trooped in dripping, long enough to say, "Loco," before she went back to her vids, a beer in hand.

Ben peeled off the windbreaker in a sodden heap and dropped onto the couch to sneak a fast kiss behind the ear. Sal giggled and batted him away. "Trez wet, cher; go find a towel."

"Trez picky, some people," Ben told her, but he went off to find whether Dek and Meg had left the rest of them any dry towels. Those two were huddled in the single dark bedroom, curled against each other on one of the two double beds. He didn't think it had to do with sex; it had more to do with Dek's lost look on that beach, and the way Meg had her arms around him spoke more of holding him to the ground than of seduction. Ben grabbed a towel and went back to the main room without saying anything.

Sal finally relented to lean against him after he got himself into dry things, and they watched a couple of back-to-back action flicks, laughing at all the ways the dirtside movie-makers got the military stuff wrong, and getting mildly buzzed on cheap beer from the rental's kitchenette. Rain beat a steady, alien tattoo against the thick window shades. 

After a while, the sound of the shower merged into the sound of the rain, and after another little while, Dek and Meg slouched out to join them, hand twined in hand. "Food?" Meg said. When no one offered an opinion, she groaned and let go of Dekker, went to check out the kitchenette.

Dekker sat down on the floor, still not talking, his back stiff and rigid against the couch between Ben's leg and Sal's hip. After a moment, Sal reached over and ran her fingers through his damp hair, ruffling it up in furrows.

"Some vacation this is," Ben said loudly, and shut off the vid, ignoring Sal's irritated "Hey!" There was a pile of brochures on the end table and he picked up a random handful. There had to be _something_ to do on this ball of dirt other than watching pretty-boy wandering around in a cloud of gloom, Meg getting in touch with her deeply buried homemaker side, and Sal suffering from attacks of agoraphobia.

"Fully stocked," came Meg's cross voice from the other side of the cabin. "Fully stocked, the ad for this outfit said it was supposed to be. Fuck _that_. The vending machines on Helldeck had better stuff than this. Uh ... who wants soup?"

Ben jogged Sal with his elbow. "Hey, look, they got a castle here. Big one. Probably got, what do you call those damn things, gargoyles and everything."

"I was _watching_ that," was Sal's sullen response.

"Could watch reindeer getting herded, if we wanted to go farther north. Look, here, they've got a farm where --"

"Fuck you, Pollard; turn the show back on."

"Oh look!" Meg crowed. "Cocoa! I haven't had that in _forever_. Dek, you want cocoa?"

Dekker stirred, and Sal gave him an absent-minded pat on the head before withdrawing her hand to swat Ben's reindeer farm brochures away from her nose.

"Never liked it much," Dek said. "Sorry, Meg."

"You're kidding! Seriously, _cocoa_. The _real_ stuff. Hey, Sal? Ben?"

Sal had given up on the vid and laid herself down on the couch, one of her legs in Ben's lap and the other resting against Dekker's shoulder. Her beer rested on her chest and bobbed when she spoke. "This stuff comes from an animal, does it?" 

"Well, you don't _kill_ the animal..."

Sal and Ben shared a look of disgust. Leaning out of the kitchen, Meg waggled a brown packet at them. "And we have the artificial sort for those with no sense of culinary adventure."

"Think I got all my adventure out this morning." Ben squirmed a little on the couch; he still kept finding sand in inconvenient places.

"It's afternoon," Dekker said. "Late afternoon."

_"What_ ever. God." Time zones freaked him out -- bloody inconvenient and just _unnatural_. Everything he'd read about the diurnal cycle and the way Earthers were tied to it hadn't prepared him for how striking _weird_ it was. His body kept telling him one time, his eyes giving him another.

"Cocoa! Last call!"

Ben raised two fingers in the air. Couldn't get this lot to do anything interesting, at least he could get drunk. "Beer."

"Me too," Dekker said.

Sal put a hand up. "Could use another one."

Meg snorted. Something clinked as she moved around in the kitchen. "I said cocoa. You can get your own damn beer, Aboujib. Not to speak of the rest of you."

Dek tilted his head to the side to say something to Sal, too low for Ben to catch, and she laughed; the beer bottle on her chest did a little skip-hop. Ben's skin felt suddenly too tight, the room too small. The whole thing was just -- _weird_ , was what it was. None of them should be here, on Earth, on _his_ vacation. These were just people he worked with, and, well, okay, people he had sex with, in the case of Sal. And occasionally Meg. And one time, Dekker _and_ Meg, when they'd all been pretty drunk, and riding high on the floating feeling that came from the kinetic-memory tapes. But that -- that was sex, plain and simple. It didn't mean anything, any more than some of the crazy shit they said sometimes, in the down-time after flight, when they were all strung out and worn out and tired. 

They shouldn't be here. He didn't even _like_ these people.

Except when he did. And _that_ was a gravity well that turned his bones to water, his stomach to ice, that made him dig in his fingers and cling to every last shred of sanity he possessed. Because he'd _seen_ where it got people, that sort of thinking, out in the Belt; Ben was a numbers guy, and he could run _those_ numbers, oh god, run them in his sleep.

He got up, shrugging off Sal's leg in a quick sharp movement that made her beer tilt dangerously on the hills and valleys of her chest. "Okay, sumbitch, _now_ what --?"

Meg was saying something not so complimentary about men; but he went to the window. There was just one moment of instinctive hesitation before he opened it, a spacer child's gut reflex screaming that there's nothing outside, nothing but lethal vacuum _._ But here there was only rain, a cold wet slap in the face that knocked him back a little.

"The hell you doing?" Sal wanted to know.

"Just seeing if it's dark." Still couldn't get over that -- light and dark, one after the other, and no human agency could speed that up, or halt it. The world outside was a dank gray; he couldn't really see the ocean, but there were lights glimmering far out in the haze. Boats, houses, he didn't know -- he couldn't figure this alien landscape, where the equations didn't match the ones he'd always known. 

He couldn't see the stars through the rain.

And he should have been _here_ , anyway, not up there; _this_ should be his life, down here, at the wrong end of a gravity well, but for effing Dekker and Dekker's fucked-up life and Dekker's enemies. Ben Pollard was a man with a plan, and these people in this room weren't part of his plan.

Something went by in the rain -- flying, fast, too small to be a plane. Animal. Bird. Never seen one before. It made his heart do a quick trip-beat; the memory tapes weren't supposed to kick in, not when you didn't have your hands on the boards, but sometimes he'd see something move fast in the corner of his eye and it'd track like an incoming shot. His fingers clenched on the windowsill.

He wasn't supposed to be getting fucking _shot_ at. He was a computer guy. He ran the numbers so _other_ people could get shot at.

Something clunked on the windowsill, next to his hand. Beer bottle, water beading its side. He tracked it, with some lag, then looked up to track on Dekker, looking back at him with one of those twenty-k stares that could mean absolutely anything.

"Meg opened you a beer," Dekker said after a moment. "I wouldn't be in your shoes if you piss her off."

Behind them, the girls had gone off in some kind of argument. "Fucking gravity makes me tired," Sal was saying.

"It's one gee. It's what humans _evolved_ in."

"Too strong," Sal said, stubborn.

"That's a damn excuse not to help me out here, Aboujib, god's my witness."

I never wanted to be tied to any of you, Ben wanted to say. I could cut you loose anytime I want. I could've come here by myself; it's just the rest of you dragged yourselves along. I didn't _choose_ this.

"Gonna drink that?" Dekker said. "Or just admire it. Because, you know, Meg gets pissed at you, she gets pissed at men in general, and I sleep with the woman."

"That's your problem, Dekker." He uncurled his fingers from the windowsill -- god, _ow_ \-- and wrapped them around the bottle. Earth beer had a weird, dark taste -- hard to get used to. But, like a lot of other things ... you just did.

Dekker leaned on the wall.

"So," Ben said. "Earth."

Dek snorted a small laugh. "Yeah."

"Weird."

"Yeah."

Meg yelled across the room, "Shut the frigging _window_ , Pollard!"

"Don't get in a knot, Kady."

Room was starting to smell like whatever Meg was cooking in there. Kind of burnt, but not half bad. He shut the window, shut out the damp and cold.

Not what he'd expected. Not what he'd planned. This vacation. This life.

But not so bad, for all of that.

And he'd damn well drag Sal to that reindeer farm if it fuckin' _killed_ him.

 


End file.
